Thursday, February 14, 2002

Beijing/Frankfurt (February 14, 2002) Seven German nationals have been arrested at Tiananmen Square around 7.05 a.m. MEZ (middle European time), 2:05 p.m. (Beijing time). They had participated in a peaceful sit-in for freedom of statement, freedom of religious practices and freedom of assembly in the PRC, an effort that was brutally brought to an end a few minutes after it had begun, so reports the International Association for Human Rights (IGFM) in Frankfurt/Germany. Participants in this sit-in are followers of the Falun Gong meditation system, which is outlawed in China.

Other participants in this demonstration were Falun Gong practitioners from several nations. Already on February 13, 2002, thirteen Falun Gong practitioners, four of those from Great Britain, had been arrested at their Beijing hotel. Prior to their departure, German demonstrators Annett and Stefan Munter, Caroline and Stephanie Koerper, Andre Huber, Bernhard Auernhammer and Hubert Koerper had left a document with the IGFM in Frankfurt where they detailed their reasons for taking this step.

They primarily demanded the release of Mrs. Xiong Wei, a former student at the Technical University of Berlin, and also the release of all incarcerated Falun Gong practitioners in the PRC.

The IGFM has demanded that the German government must immediately intervene for the incarcerated demonstrators and also for all prisoners of conscience in the PRC. The IGFM points out that Falun Gong is devoid of any violence and is a peaceful, Buddhist-based meditation movement. Eight other Germans had already been arrested in Beijing on November 20, 2001as they demonstrated peacefully at Tiananmen Square for religious freedom and freedom of statement.

The IGFM will gladly provide photographs of the demonstrators as well as the official statement they had filed.

Further information about human rights abuses in the PRC can be found on the web at www.igfm.de

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(Original text in German)